Watching his team lose to Columbus, Chicago and Detroit was too much for Doug Armstrong. So Craig Berube is out and Drew Bannister is in as coach of the St. Louis Blues.
Can lightning strike twice for Doug Armstrong?
Just over five years ago, his appointment of Craig Berube as interim head coach led the St. Louis Blues all the way to their only Stanley Cup win in franchise history.
Tuesday night, the Blues general manager went back to the well. Following a 6-4 loss to the Detroit Red Wings, Armstrong said he met with Berube and “had a beer,” while informing him that his tenure with the organization had come to an end.
Armstrong said Wednesday that he plans to undertake a thorough search process for his next permanent head coach. In the meantime, Drew Bannister takes the reins on an interim basis. He had been in his third season behind the bench of the Blues’ AHL affiliate, the Springfield Thunderbirds.
Berube, 57, carved out a 1,054-game NHL playing career as a rugged left winger, and his 3,154 penalty minutes rank seventh on the all-time list. After his playing career ended, he moved to coaching — first with the Philadelphia Flyers organization, including two seasons as head coach of the big club, then with the Blues.
When Berube took over the head job in November of 2018, St. Louis had a record of 7-9-3 and was seven points out of a wild-card playoff spot. The team fell all the way to last place in the NHL before starting the remarkable turnaround that got them to 45-28-9 by the end of the year and into third place in the Central Division. In the playoffs, they took down the Winnipeg Jets (six games), the Dallas Stars (seven games) and the San Jose Sharks (six games) before beating the Boston Bruins on home ice in a seven-game Stanley Cup Final to win their championship.
The following year, the Blues sat first in the Central when the season was paused in March of 2020 due to COVID-19. When the NHL mounted its ‘bubble’ playoffs that summer, St.
